Britain basks in nature’s greatest light show: The Aurora Borealis makes rare appearance over North Yorkshire
The ethereal display can normally only be seen from within the Arctic Circle.
But the heavens above the Tan Hill pub in North Yorkshire were illuminated by dazzling colours yesterday thanks to freak solar activity.
And the glorious display is expected to be visible again tomorrow and Wednesday after a further strong solar storm in the early hours of today.
Stargazers in parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland and in North East England were also able to see the dazzling display yesterday night.
Photographer Paul Kingston captured the breath-taking sight yesterday evening as the skies were painted with a palette of subtle colours, purple, yellow and orange, and at some points neon green.
He said: “To the naked eye it was so subtle, that at first I didn’t realise exactly what I was seeing – but a long exposure in the camera made it suddenly jump out at me, and then, as my eyes became more and more attuned I could see it flickering across the sky more and more clearly – a fantastic sight and one I have never seen, or expected to see in this part of the country.”
Glorious display … the sky above the Tan Hill pub is bathed in a kaleidoscope of colourNorth News
Peter Richardson, 49, a bar man at the Tan Hill pub said: “It was very surreal.
“We are used to seeing spectacular sunsets and sunrises in this part of the country, so I didn’t know what to expect when I heard we could see the Northern Lights.
“There was a gentle array of colours, mainly oranges and greens.
“It was nice to see, very pretty.
“Two girls that work at the pub came out too and they were really impressed, they were absolutely blown away.
“Part of me was thinking it’s very spiritual and existential, but part of me was thinking it’s freezing!
“You could see the colours were shifting in the skies, it was great as a piece of living theatre.
“The pictures look absolutely stunning, it was a lot more visible on the photos than to the naked eye.”
The glorious natural light show is caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere.
Elsewhere, walkers on the moors of the Pennines in County Durham stopped in their tracks as the flickering light show filled the night sky above them.
On Thursday last week, astronomers noticed a coronal mass ejection, a burst of electrically charged particles thrown out by the sun, which have caused the Northern Lights to appear more vividly and be viewed over a wider area than normal.
A strong solar flare generated by a Sunspot peaked at around 4am this morning and caused a R2 radio black out ? a moderate black out of high frequency radio communication, which lasted for 19 minutes.
February 14th, 2012 at 10:32 pm
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